How much should games cost? We asked that question back in 2017, when the standard big-budget release came in at $60, and even made the case for prices being lowered to $50, or even $40. Some studios got the memo: Helldivers 2 launched at $40, for instance, and Dune 2 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 arrived at $50. But in spite of our very convincing math and graphs, prices on major big-budget games have instead gone up over the years.
It's been a slow ascent—Call of Duty brought the $70 game to Steam in 2022—but it looked set to accelerate earlier this year when Nintendo dropped an $80 tag on Mario Kart World for the Switch 2. Microsoft quickly followed with an $80 price on The Outer Worlds 2, although that was quickly walked back in the face of gamer outrage to the less-loathed $70 price point. Take-Two studio Gearbox also made a big point of listing Borderlands 4 at $70, not $80.
